77: I would join the Catholics over and over again

Episode 77 As a Catholic, when is it okay to compromise? Matt shares how his faith and his politics inform each other and how he understands compromise - and red lines. He believes wholeheartedly in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist – and also belongs to an ecumenical queer church community. He sees community as important to Catholic people, and a part of upholding dignity at work and reducing reliance on state-provided welfare support. But, Matt says, ‘We’ve lost that as Catholics.’  

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis used the image of a caravan for our travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey.  And Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed and maybe challenged now and then.  I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying them, it helps if you rate and review on the platform where you're listening. Thank you.

'You end up in a situation where people don't actually have space to be spiritual, have space to reflect and be in community, have space and break bread together because they don't have that dignity at work.'

So listeners, I hope you enjoy this week's episode coming up in a moment. Make sure you tune in next week because that's when I'll be sharing the information about how to engage more closely with this community around the All Kinds of Catholic podcast.

Listeners, thanks for joining today. I'm joined by Matt. We're going to have quite an in-depth conversation today, I think. It's going to focus on politics a little bit. And I'm just warning you of that because if you're somebody who is reaching for the off button, I encourage you to stay with us. I think it's going to be a really interesting conversation. It's good to talk to somebody who's a Catholic and, you know, has a good understanding of politics and can give us some shape around that. And I hope we'll bring you with us if this isn't something you're particularly comfortable talking about. So welcome, Matt. 

Thanks very much. Thanks for having me.

In our earlier conversation, Matt, I was saying to you that I thought this was a really good time to talk to you on the podcast because you've got a political background. I just think, for myself, I'm seeing that for Catholic people who've found a home on the left or on the right, things have really changed in the last couple of years, perhaps a bit longer. Many Catholic people might be feeling a bit less certain about where they belong. I'm interested to see what you think about that. And you said to me in our conversation previously that your theology and your politics inform each other. Perhaps you'd give us a little bit of a, in a nutshell, idea of what you mean by that and what your experience is so listeners can get a bit orientated to this conversation. 

Of course. So I am a political scientist, an academic at Queen Mary in London University and at University of Birmingham. And my background before that was working for several Labour Party MPs and working for the party, campaign manager, and working for several centre-left think tanks. That's where I'm coming from. I suppose for me, my politics and faith have always informed one another because I grew up in London. Now I'm based in Birmingham. I went to St. Dominic's sixth form college. There I met and was taught by several people who were very liberal, very liberal progressive Catholics. And it was them who encouraged me to join the Party out of that sort of mission. 

And have you felt very comfortable in the Labour Party as a Catholic? 

That is an interesting question because I have this thing about, how do Christians in general, not only Catholics, how do they survive in institutions, whether that be in your workplace or whether that be in a political party? Obviously, being in a political party means that you have to have compromises and you have to compromise in terms of your own beliefs, but you also have to have your own red lines. And sometimes I feel, particularly some of the Catholics, if you look at some of the Catholic MPs  like Florence Eshalomi in Vauxhall in London, and that voting record is very much of a rebel. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile your faith, which can be very 100 %. Sort of very principled and absolute. You can see how they've struggled with having to maintain the party whip or the party line compared to perhaps some of their principles around faith, which are by nature very absolutist and difficult to reconcile within the institutions that you're in. So the answer to the question is, it's been difficult because you accept the context in which you are. You accept the fact that no government can just wave a magic wand and reduce poverty overnight. You accept the fact that international markets exist and you accept the fact that we are where we are. So as a result, you've got to try and navigate through for yourself in order to say to yourself, Okay, well, I think I can stay in the party because we've done this good thing today or stopped this bad thing from happening today. And lots of people I know have left as a result of their faith or their beliefs. Things around Gaza, things around what they would describe as copying the Conservatives' austerity. Things like this are driving people away. So it is very difficult, I think, for Christians. But then again, being in the Catholic Church and maintaining your stance in the Catholic Church is also difficult in itself. And that's an institution that is very imperfect, that has a long history, that has a difficult context. And that can be difficult, staying, in itself.  Actually I see being part of the Catholic Church and being part of the Party as very similar, both requiring lots of compromises. 

Thank you, Matt, that's really interesting. That's on the one hand, not what I thought you were going to say. I was imagining, I suppose, that you would be very committed to Labour Party principles and perhaps didn't feel able to talk about the challenges in quite so upfront a way. But it's helpful too, because I think we can all understand what it is to have to make compromises just in like you say, in any institution or in our families and in our workplaces. There's all sorts of things where we could have such principles that we ended up withdrawing from life altogether because things didn't quite measure up, as people with, like you say, beliefs that can seem absolutist. But that's a really interesting place to start. Just tell us a little bit about your own faith then, if you would. You mentioned you were a Catholic sixth form. Has your faith been something that was important to you when you were a young adult? Is it something that has been very steady in your life? Have there been some little wobbles along the way or big wobbles? 

My Catholicism comes from my mum's side of the family. My gran was German from Dortmund.  She was the one who was Catholic and then she came over to work for two years and then met my granddad, who had moved down from Liverpool, in London and they met and stayed together. My mum and her siblings all were placed within the Catholic Church and then it led to us and I went to Catholic school. I went to the Salvatorian College in Harrow – a boys’ Catholic School, then St Dominic's. So yeah, it has been a recurring part of my story. I went to university at University of Birmingham and joined the Catholic Society straight away. It was about in my second year I came out. So when I was 20, I came out as gay and as so many LGBTQ or queer Catholics and Christians have experienced, that is the point where you sort of question whether faith is for you, whether you're meant to, whether you should be remaining in or not in faith, whether God is for you or not. For instance, there was a lot of fear when I was going back to tell my family at Christmas that I was gay. I decided I was going to do it all at one go and not do it slowly. The first thing that one of my close relatives said to me was, Oh, well, I suppose you don't believe in God anymore. How can you say that? Particularly because all the rest of the family had stopped going to Mass. I was going to Mass every Sunday. 

The irony. 

Yeah. So I was going to Mass every Sunday. I was very, remained, very committed to my faith. So I sort of came away from that, with that sign that, if you're queer, you should not be, you cannot believe in God anymore. And so I sort of drifted for a year or two. I put myself sort of as agnostic. But then I decided the thing is that if you take away, if you're able to do that, if you take away the LGBT part of my identity, I am really Catholic. I do believe in transubstantiation. It is really important to me. I am ecumenical and I've grown older into an ecumenical place, which would just mean recognition of other denominations. But there is a difference for me doing communion at an ecumenical church or doing communion at Methodist church or doing communion at a Church of England church compared to doing it at a Catholic church. There's also something for me in the sense that being able to go into Mass and all be able to speak the words that we know off by heart. That is just quite powerful to me. I quite like the, some people call it the performance of Mass, and how it's performed.  One thing that you realise when you start exploring other denominations, you realise, for instance, other denominations don't have communion every Sunday. I realised how important that is to me. I realised how important things like our confession are to me. The Catholic tradition around Advent and preparing for the birth of Jesus, preparing for the crucifixion of Jesus, the different ways we think about Jesus and His sacrifice. I never realised that Anglicans tend to believe that, linked to this idea of transubstantiation - just in case you don't know, it's that Catholics believe that the body and blood of Christ, when they've been blessed, they become the actual body and blood of Christ. Anglicans believe that it's not the actual body and blood of Christ, but it's just in memory of Jesus and His sacrifice in the Last Supper. Linked to that is that the Catholics believe that, in a sort of concept of time, that Jesus is being crucified every single Sunday, almost all the time, whereas Anglicans believe that it happened, it's in the past, and we're remembering it. So, just lots of very fundamental things that for me, just if I was choosing which denomination to join, I would join the Catholics over and over again. Probably also just being in the Labour Party or having a past in the Labour Party where you are taught to do as you're told and we have very centralised power - it feels very much at home in the Catholic Church. Just being able to say, What does the Vatican think? What's the party line on this? So, I explored it and then just came back to Catholicism. Also just accepted that, you know, I go and pray.  I tend to try and go and pray in church during lunchtimes. I find it really helpful, but also just occupying that space and just saying, I am gay, I am Catholic, and I'm not leaving. There are some people in the Church who’d like me to leave. There are some people in the church who believe that, you know, I choose to do this, or that it's just a lifestyle. But that's just who I am. Recently as well, having, thanks to Quest, through the LGBTQ Pastoral Group for Catholics, I've met LGBT Catholic priests. And it has allowed me to be able to go back to confession, which has always been important for me, because it meant that I can sit in a confessional box and not feel like I have to say sorry for being gay and for loving who I love and for having my fiancé. It's been amazing. So there's definitely been different chapters there, but it's been an interesting journey. 

I'm so moved listening to you, Matt. I really am so moved. I think you've got right to the heart of your faith there. That's a wonderful witness. I think listeners will also be very moved by the powerful way in which you've been able to describe what you really believe and how you've reflected on the differences that you've seen between being a Catholic and belonging to a different denomination, which  I imagine somebody might think that there are other Christian denominations that would be more LGBT affirming, where you might feel more comfortable. But actually you know what you really believe in your heart and you're sticking with that. That's a very powerful witness. You know, I'm grateful for you sharing in such detail there. Thank you. I wonder if we might talk a little bit about politics, just because I think it's such a good opportunity to hear from someone who's swimming in that world, in that murky sea. So about things like poverty then, Pope Leo has just released this new document, Dilexi Te, and I was saying to you before, I started reading it. He talks about the poor and the Church being for the poor. He has some really useful ways of recognising that it's not just about the poor being recipients of our concern, but actually we are all one. The poor are part of the church as much as anybody else. Those of us who are not poor can learn from people who are poor and be evangelised by people who are poor among our community. So I just wonder where you think politics can play a part in lifting people out of poverty and what are the values that you would be looking for in a political party? 

That's a really interesting question because what you've got there is sort of linking back to what I was saying earlier about how do we survive institutions? One of the institutions we all live in, in Western countries, at least a lot of countries, is capitalism. And having to square the fact that obviously as Catholics and as Christians, we do a lot of work to try and alleviate poverty and to help those who have been impoverished. And we also tend to be quite left wing in some ways. In fact, I think most surveys, despite the common belief, most surveys shows that Christians tend to be more likely to be left wing than right wing. But we do have to square the fact that free market economics has helped a lot of people out of poverty. It's been one of the best vehicles for doing that. And again, this is why it's interesting because in the Labour Party has similar issues in the sense that it needs to be able to alleviate poverty. And when it looks at, actually part of the project I'm doing now is looking at how the Labour Party feels like it needs to challenge capitalism because it feels like it needs to - because it sees, like lots of Christians do in their work, lots of Christian organisations see what capitalism does to  vulnerable people, poor people. But at the same time, it's faced with this idea that it does work and operate within a capitalist society and it needs to cooperate with certain capitalist interests if it wants economic growth. I think actually politics has become particularly difficult now, probably particularly difficult for Christians because since the financial crisis 2007/2008, Britain has essentially had no growth. We've just stalled.  The other question that I've been asking is, is it easier to be a Christian and in a political party or vote for a certain party at a time when Britain is prosperous? Because back in the times of New Labour with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, it was probably a lot easier to say - apart from up to the point of the Iraq War, which I think is important for politics -  but in terms of economic politics, it was probably easier to say, I'm a Christian, and I vote Labour or I'm a Labour Party member. Because you could say, Well, we're doing all these great things. The economy was growing, taxes were growing, so we were able to refund lots of money into things, into services, into Sure Start, into schools, which alleviate poverty, into tax credits. But when we're in a situation where the economy is stalling as we are now, more and more people feel like they're worse off and more and people want to vote for parties which are anti-market. And we've got a Labour government which is obviously struggling to get any economic growth. It becomes harder. When I used to be a campaign manager in my previous life, we would meet Christian denominations that refused to vote and say that, It's in God's hands. So they sort of almost defect from that. You've got this problem at the moment where we exist within a capitalist world, but capitalism seems to have stalled. So we can't make capitalism less bad, which is sometimes what the Labour Party have done and sometimes what perhaps would allow Christians to square their faith with a certain political view. But you've also got lots of people on the left and Christians who would call for wealth taxes and things like that, which I'm not entirely sure would help or are feasible. And then on the other extreme on the right, if you had someone here from the evangelical politically-right wing, they might say to you, Well, God helps those who help themselves. And again, some other denominations will tell you, Well, it's not about where we live now. It's not about this life. It's about the next life. And so don't worry about this life. There's been quite a lot of work that's sort of trying to criticise that and say, Well, actually, we should try to bring about more of the kingdom of heaven on earth now rather than waiting for the rapture, and not worrying about poor people. I think you've got these two sort of extremes and it requires compromise. But there's Jesus, Jesus compromised, I think, when he told people to pay their taxes. When he recruited certain people from the elites, such as Matthew, a tax collector. Lots of people wouldn’t want him on board. I think it's difficult. And also, I think if you look at particularly the Welfare Bill that the Labour government recently introduced, which was aimed at reducing welfare spending, again, I mentioned Flo Eshalomi. She was one of the leading rebels and also speaks about her Catholic faith a lot. She was one of the leading people who rebelled against the government on that. So you can see that, playing out in politics, people's faith informing what they should do. And also, on a foreign policy level, you obviously see faith playing out over Israel and Gaza. Everything that will be -appalling things that happened in that conflict - has also drawn people because, again, their faith and even not their faith. I mean, even if they're Jewish or if you're culturally Muslim or if you're culturally Catholic. So you have no faith, but you have friends and communities that are rooted in that faith or in that tradition of faith, then that has an impact. And trying to hold that all together within these institutions, on the compromises that you feel you can and can't make is difficult. 

I hear you and I think there's something in us. We want things to be simpler, but I think that you've captured very well there how, I mean, I hadn't made a connection with the lack of growth since the global financial crisis, but I can see that. It has become much more difficult to make choices about who to vote for, where to feel comfortable. It is more of a case by case situation as you're indicating some of those MPs are finding. That they have to make choices and compromises much more readily than perhaps we did in the past when things were running more smoothly in our capitalist world. It reminds me a little bit of conversations I've had with people about peace issues that I get quite enmeshed in. And I've sometimes said to people, Well, I really do believe in nonviolence and nonviolent approaches to conflict rather than armed so-called solutions. But actually that doesn't necessarily give you a really clear way to respond to armed conflict situations or conflicts internationally. It just gives you somewhere to start wrestling with it. You've still got to wrestle with each case as it comes along. Do the work, thinking about, discerning. What is the best thing to do in this situation? How can I act in this situation? It reminds me of that, that just another layer of complication when you have Christian values that you're also trying to live by, to bring to those decisions that we all need to make. 

Yeah, absolutely. And trying to explain to the people of Ukraine that they should have a nonviolent response to a violent invasion would be difficult. It sort of lies in theory. It's like, I believe in a two-state solution, always have, of Israel/Palestine. Very glad that UK have recognised Palestine, wish it had done ages ago. But saying two-state solution feels like a more of a theoretical concept at this point than an actual realising place. People on both sides are saying that they don't know, not interested in that. So yeah, it's difficult. But I would also say that it takes a village, right? So like it is important that we have people who push people into thinking, Is there a non-conflictual way of supporting this? Everyone has a role in that way. I'm a universalist, so I believe we're all worshipping the same God. And I think it makes sense to me, that if God comes down, if there is an all-powerful God, I think it makes sense that they would come through many different cultures, many different ways, many different histories to reach as many people as possible. Some listeners may disagree with that. I believe it in the same way in terms of politics in that way. I believe like, we need, in order to be able to do God's work, you need different people doing different things and arguing different things and pushing the argument from both sides.  

I can get on board with that too. While we're on the grubby subject of capitalism, can we just talk about the dignity of work then, which would be another Catholic social teaching, absolutely foundational principle that I think is also something that feels less certain in today's world? We've got this whole AI thing hanging over us as well now. Well, if we choose to frame it like that, I suppose, but certainly there is uncertainty about what work is going to look like and an increase in work that doesn't seem to carry much dignity in our society. I wonder where you begin to think about that as someone who's a Catholic and involved in politics. 

Yeah, several things. Again, I think this comes back to why I am a Catholic because we have this sort of stereotype that Catholics like to drink a lot of alcohol and love to socialise and we don't have what is then stereotyped as the Protestant work ethic which is trying to instill to us through capitalism. Often people draw on Thatcherism as sort of trying to instill a Protestant work ethic. I think it's important. Another reason why I would choose Catholicism because I do believe that they see community as being really important. I actually feel like we've lost that as Catholics in several ways. So talking about poverty, dignity at work, you feel like there are lots of things that community could do in aiding that.  So back to your point about the state and how interventionist the state should be. Well, when we had the welfare debate, I was just thinking, if we had better sense of community, maybe we wouldn't need to rely so much on the state. So the idea that someone is unable to go out, or communicate, or becomes socially isolated, I just sort of heard that and thought, That's so sad that that's where we've ended up. I feel like as I was saying earlier, I know lots of people who identify as culturally Catholic.  I just feel like we don't have that in the same way that other faiths have managed to hold on to their sense of identity. I feel like, you know, we don't have Catholic quarters. Here in Birmingham, we have a gay quarter, Chinese quarter. We don't have a Catholic quarter. We don't have communities of Catholics who live together or live side by side, build communities.  Even during the Mass and in my own parish, I feel like it's quite disconnected in several ways. So, I think that dignity of work point is about how work is important, but it's also important, it's not the most meaningful part of life. So, I think having that sense of community and that sense of being able to be connected, having the ability - So, we run a church called Queer Church Birmingham, which is a cross-denominational church in Birmingham for LGBTQ people and allies from any faith or none. And one of things you notice is that some people have the most gruelling work that is badly paid, takes a bad toll on their health, is not stable. I'm thinking particularly like social care work, healthcare work. I mean, they don't even get Sundays off. They don't get a weekend. They end up having the bits and pieces of the weekend across the week sometimes if they're lucky. It just means they can't actually come to church when they want to because they are just constantly working. You end up in a situation where people don't actually have space to be spiritual, have space to reflect and be in community, have space and break bread together because they don't have that dignity at work. And then once again, as you were saying, it links back to capitalism and links back to the need to have good trade unions that understand how it works, understand how industrial relations work and how to do it well. Lots of the industries that currently don't have that. So you lose that dignity of work, you lose that sense of being able to build your own community, also be able to build your own spiritual community and become connected and dedicate time to God. The other part of your question, I'd say on AI is I'm actually really optimistic. It is split currently between people who are optimistic and pessimistic about AI. The first reason I would say I would be optimistic that AI isn't going to just destroy all our jobs tomorrow is because there's almost certainly a bubble going on in the AI market right now. Seems to be the only thing that's driving US economic growth. If it wasn't for AI shares, stocks and shares, America would definitely be feeling the result of Trump's tariffs a lot more than they currently are. I can't understand how that will be sustainable. So I think there will be a pause. Secondly, I think we've had this before. We were all meant to be in driverless cars by now. I remember doing work in the think tanks and they were saying, you know, by 2025, we will be in driverless cars. That hasn't quite worked out. Robotics was meant to take everything from us, we were meant to have robot bar staff until we worked out that no one can get a robot to pinch your fingers together. It's actually a really difficult thing to get a robot to do, so it's stalled. Thirdly, and to my point about spirituality, there are people who say, if AI can do your job now, then you're already a robot. I think that's true. AI seems to be benefitting people with skills. I think what's more likely going to happen is it's going to mean that lots of boring parts of your job will be able to be taken over by someone else or by AI and that will free more time to do other things.  But obviously, there'll be some dislocation and again, that's the role for government to be like, How are we going to manage the transition? I do think there will still be a role for people that are... I think where it's dangerous and where people have done good work on this is in terms of monitoring workers. For example, you could have a software system that tells you when I'm looking at my screen and when I'm not looking at my screen. I think stuff like that is bad. It would just further make you into a robot because psychology suggests that people need to think, they need to look away, they need to - Sometimes people call it procrastination, but actually sometimes that's good. It's processing time. That link between Catholics, ‘lazy Catholics’ and their sense of society and wanting to enjoy themselves with this ‘Protestant work ethic,’ that is what's dangerous. I don't think we're all going to fade away from being needed in the capitalist machine. And I think the transition will actually take longer than people say because it always does. 

One thing that I was just thinking that you have kind of demonstrated there is that having this challenge of AI coming down the track, it does show how actually we human beings, really care about what's going to happen and we care about being purposeful and having control over our lives. And we're thinking about what the challenges might be. And we're trying to think about how we can together mitigate some of those negatives that may happen. And so there's a great deal of values and principles that we all hold in common actually that I think are kind of demonstrated in the way we respond to what a difference AI might make to our world. How we can make the best of that, even if we fail to make the best of it in some way in the end.  That's the pessimistic part of me. That I look at how the internet can be a wonderful thing, but of course we've created an underbelly along the way. 

Yeah, absolutely. And also your work on peace and conflict resolution will be particularly important. The thing that scares me about AI is the fact that you can have AI making decisions on the battlefield, which again sounds like a terrible idea. 

For listeners, I guess AI might be something we talk about again. I did want to return to what you were saying about this Queer church now in Birmingham. Tell us a bit more about that. Some listeners may be really interested to know more information about that. Tell us what that looks like. 

Yeah, absolutely. So we meet next to Birmingham New Street, in the Girlguiding building. We are a small church. We started in January of this year. We meet every week.  Once a month we have our ecumenical communion service. As I said, ecumenical just means across denominations. We are for everyone, LGBTQ people and allies. We've got lots of different denominations. We also accept anyone who's of no faith at all or of different faith.  One week we'll have communion and live music. The other weeks we tend to do discussion-based topics: how to be Christian in a capitalist world, whether God is the Wizard of Oz who is here to grant all of our wishes. And if not, what's the point of prayer? We have looked at Revelation, the women in the Old Testament. Last week, I ran it, I did Faith and Comedy and how in my sixth form in particular, we were taught to take the mickey out of our faith because you need to feel a bit more robust about your faith. Particularly, I've seen lots of people shatter when they come up against, in public debates, and people challenge their faith.  I think if you can't sort of laugh along with it, it means it's going be harder to defend it. And we go on retreats, and we go to Birmingham Pride. It's been a really good community that we've been building. 

Wonderful. I'll put a link in the episode notes so people can follow up if they want to. Just before we close, Matt, I wonder if you'd give us a little bit of a window into your prayer life. Is there a prayer that you return to? Is there a prayer practice that's helpful to you? 

So, one, I always wear my crucifix. I remind my students at university when I'm teaching that if I'm taking the mickey out of the Catholics, it's okay because I am one. I used to go clubbing in a rosary. I used to go into the LGBT bars in my short shorts with my rosary around me. But the prayer that I most like is Hail Mary. And the reason for that is we've done some interesting series in the church, Queer church Birmingham, looking at what is it like to pray to God if they were a woman. And it's remarkable the different relationships you have with that. And I think one of the things that other denominations don't have, they don't think of Mary in the same way as we do. It is just another access, another path to God. For me, I’ve spoken publicly, my background is in queer domestic violence. My father is a domestic violence perpetrator, and I've been estranged from my family for a while. Being able to pray to Mary, who is sort of a mother figure, I think has been really important.  What I find myself doing more often is just casually praying to Mary, even if that's just in my head, walking along the street. What I find even more interesting particularly being gay, being able to pray to her and just casually talk to Mary about gay life is sort of what lots of gay men would do with their mums. It's quite nice being able to have that link to Mary. And my fiancé, he's a progressive evangelical, inclusive evangelical. He doesn't understand it. He doesn't get Mary. I think it's been interesting for him to see that having Mary as a woman figure to Catholics, it gives you something, along with the saints as well. Yeah, so my prayer practices would definitely centre around Mary. Every time one of my friends have kids, every time they have a baby, I go to St. Chad's, which is the Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham. I get one of those slightly garish Mary bottle figures and fill it up with holy water, take it to them along with a rosary. I say even if they're not Christian or not Catholic, this is my way of marking their birth. So, revolving around Mary, I think, is a big thing for me. 

Well, that's very creative. We're going to bring the conversation to a close now, Matt. Thanks ever so much for giving us some time. I've really enjoyed talking to you. It's given me a lot to think about. I don't spend as much time thinking about political questions and my faith as I could because it's just become so difficult these days, but that's given me something to hang my reflections on. And I hope that conversation has been helpful for listeners too. And a little glimpse into your prayer life there is really beautiful. It's wonderful to hear someone speaking so strongly about believing in transubstantiation and that being so important to them. Thank you very much for sharing from the heart today. 

Thanks very much for having me. It's been great.

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time.  I hope today's conversation has resonated with you.  A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X, Twitter and Facebook accounts @KindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there.  You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.